The Blob (1988)
The Blob is a 1988 American science-fiction horror film written and directed by Chuck Russell, co-written with Frank Darabont, and starring Shawnee Smith, Kevin Dillon, Donovan Leitch, Jeffrey DeMunn, Candy Clark and Joe Seneca. The film's title depicts an amorphous acidic amoeba-like organism that devours and dissolves anything in its path as it grows, where it begins to feed on the residents of the fictional town of Arborville, California. Plot A meteorite crashes near Arborville, California. An elderly transient discovers, within the sphere, a massive slime mold-like substance that adheres to his hand. Three high school students, Brian, Meg and Paul, take him to a hospital. After Brian leaves, Paul witnesses the lower half of the transient melting from exposure to the Blob. As he calls for help, the Blob drops on top of him. Meg arrives to see Paul being devoured by the growing Blob. While she tries freeing him, his arm dissolves off, Meg is thrown against a wall and knocked unconscious, and the Blob fully dissolves Paul and oozes out of the hospital. Scott, Paul's friend and classmate, & his date Vicki prove to be the Blob's next victims. Vicki passes out after Scott gets her drunk - The varsity football player prepares a mass-produced class ring to seduce her and mixes her another drink while the Blob enters the car and kills Vicki. Scott, thinking Vicki is still just asleep, reaches his hand into her shirt and is grabbed by the Blob that is consuming Vicki from the inside out. Scott is consumed. After Brian and Meg have unsatisfactory encounters with the police, they meet at a diner where Meg tells Brian about the Blob. Brian's disbelief is shattered when the diner's handyman is violently dragged headfirst into a sink drain by the Blob. It pursues them to the diner's walk-in freezer, but the Blob retreats after entering the freezer. After consuming the diner's owner Fran Hewitt and Sheriff Geller, the Blob reenters the sewers. Meg and Brian return to the police station, where the dispatcher tells them Deputy Briggs is near the meteor-landing site. They discover a military operation led by a scientist, Dr. Meddows, who orders the town and the two teens quarantined. While Brian escapes, Meg is taken to town where she learns her younger brother, Kevin, is missing. Meg learns he and his friend, Eddie, snuck into the movie theater. The Blob enters the theater, attacking the staff and audience. Meg arrives as the audience flees the theater, rescuing Eddie and Kevin. Brian eavesdrops on Meddows and learns that the Blob is a biological warfare experiment created during the Cold War, launched into space because it was so dangerous. Learning that the Blob has entered the sewers, Meddows decide to trap it there, even if that means allowing Meg, Kevin, and Eddie to die. Brian is discovered listening in and evades military personnel by driving his motorcycle into the sewers. In the sewers, Meg and Kevin flee from the Blob when it emerges and devours Eddie. Kevin escapes by scaling a pipe to the surface, and Meg is saved by Brian, who confronts Meddows in front of the townsfolk and Briggs. After failing to convince everyone Brian is contaminated and must die, Meddows attempts to shoot him, but is killed by the Blob as it oozes into his chemical suit and drags him into the sewer. Then, Meddow's second in command, Colonel Hargis attempts to kill the Blob by shooting it to death and blowing it up with a bomb. But this only succeeds in enraging the creature. The Blob bursts out of the sewer and kills Hargis before feasting on the town's population. The town's Reverend Meeker proclaims the scene to be the prophesied end of the world, after which a failed flamethrower attack on the Blob sets him ablaze. Meg saves him with a fire extinguisher, and in the process blasts the Blob with it. When the monster backs off, she realizes that the Blob cannot tolerate cold. The survivors retreat to the town hall and hold the Blob off with furniture-barricades and fire extinguishers, but it is a losing battle; the Blob engulfs half the building and devours Briggs. Brian goes to the town's garage and gets a snow maker truck that has canisters of liquid nitrogen attached. As the Blob is about to consume Meg and her family, Brian shoots snow at the creature, which is angered and knocks the truck over. As the Blob surges toward Brian, Meg lures it away from him toward the canisters, which she has rigged with an explosive charge taken from a dying soldier. She tries getting clear, but snags her foot between two pieces of metal, trapping her. Brian regains consciousness and runs over to free her. The Blob is about to overrun them when the charge goes off, blowing up the canisters and covering the Blob in liquid nitrogen. The creature is flash-frozen, shattering into a mass of crystallized pieces. Moss Woodley has its remains stored in the town ice house. Later, at a tent-meeting church service in a field, Meeker, disfigured by his burns and secretly driven insane, preaches a doomsday sermon resembling the Blob's attack. He has a still-living piece of the Blob, trapped inside a glass jar, to eventually unleash it once more upon the world.